February 11, 2026 • 30 mins
It’s been two months since Australia’s social media ban went into effect for kids under 16. But Jay Caspian Kang, staff writer at The New Yorker, doesn’t think America will follow suit. Jay sits down with Karah to unpack why a U.S. ban is unlikely, what Australia’s move does change, and how cultural pressure — not legislation — may be the most powerful tool we have to protect kids online.
Additional Reading:
- Americans Won’t Ban Kids from Social Media. What Can We Do Instead? | The New Yorker
- The Case for Banning Children from Social Media | The New Yorker
- If You Quit Social Media, Will You Read More Books? | The New Yorker
- Gen Z are arriving to college unable to even read a sentence—professors warn it could lead to a generation of anxious and lonely graduates | Fortune
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Welcome to tech stuff. I'm care Price and this is
the story. It's been two months since Australia's first of
its kind social media ban went into effect on December tenth,
twenty twenty five. If you were under sixteen in Australia,
you could no longer create an account on TikTok x, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube,
Snapchat or threads, to name a few, and if you
(00:37):
had a profile, it was deactivated. Of course, there are
a lot of outstanding questions, including can Australia effectively enforce
this band? But no matter how airtight the law, my
guest today thinks it could have a powerful downstream effect.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
More than anything, I think that what it does is
that it gives parents a thing to point to to say, hey, like,
you know, nobody else is on social media and therefore
you shouldn't be as well, which gets rid of one
of the big problems with kids on social media, which
is just that they feel like because everyone else is
on it, if they're not on it, they're going to
be socially isolated.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
This is Jay Caspian King. He writes the fault Lines
newsletter for The New Yorker, and he recently wrote a
piece that caught my eye titled Americans won't ban kids
from social media? What can we do? Instead? I'll let
Jay answer his own question. You wrote this article about
why you think America won't implement large scale social media
(01:33):
bands for kids very soon after the Australian band went
into effect, and before you launched into your argument, you
asked readers for the sake of the discussion, to agree
on three statements. What were those statements?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
They were One, teenagers have First Amendment rights. Two, social
media has become the place where people, especially young people,
express their views. And three social media is very bad
for kids.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
And what was the What is the question that you
set out to answer given these parameters?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Well, I think that right now, if you think about
American free speech precedent and free speech law, it's going
to be very hard to ban everything for everybody under
the age of sixteen like Australia has done. I mean,
I think that the Supreme Court has basically routinely held
that young people have freedom of speech. And it is
also routinely held that the social media platforms, even if
(02:28):
they are private, have some influence within the First Amendment
because they function as a public square. Right and so
basically say, everyone under the age of sixteen or seventeen,
or whatever age you want to put it at no
longer has access to the public square and can no
longer express their opinions. That's a huge free speech problem.
And I don't think that it would pass in this country.
(02:49):
I don't think that the court would uphold it, right,
I just don't. And so my thought was just I
have kids. I don't want them to be addicted to
social media. I don't want them to be on their
phones all day, right, and what do we do?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Right?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
We can't ban it, So then what what can Americans
do to try and make it so that kids are
not on phones all day? That was a sort of
I've been thinking about this question for a while actually,
and like you know, it's all just based on my
own neurosis as a parent.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
How many kids do you have?
Speaker 3 (03:15):
I have two?
Speaker 1 (03:17):
What are their ages?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
They are eight and three, and so I'm sorry, nine
to three. And so it's right at the beginning for
the nine year old of having some kids who have Apple.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Watches and iPad.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
They all have iPads but have started communicating via iPad.
I know that some of them text each other through iPad.
But you know, where I live in Berkeley, California, it
there is like a great social stigma around it, and
so the kids don't do it as much as they
might in other places. But yeah, I think once they
get to about twelve years old in middle school, then
(03:49):
it becomes quite ubiquitous.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
So Australia has proven how far they're willing to go.
Is there like an American answer to how far we
are willing to go in order to protect kids from
social media if it's not a full out ban.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Yeah, I think that bannings phones in school is aboad
as far as we'll go, you know. And I think
that that's happening in a lot of districts in a
lot of states. And I think that within the next
five years it'll be very rare to find a school
district in America that allows kids to have phones in school.
I personally just think that that's positive.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
You know.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
I was a teacher when I was younger, and this
was before cell phones were completely ubiquitous, you know, And
when I talk to teacher friends and everything like that
with their school doesn't have a no phones policy, they
say that they spend like an inordinate amount of time
just taking phones away from kids, you know, And I
don't think that the teacher should be doing that. I
(04:43):
don't think that that's healthy for them. I don't think
it's healthy for the classroom. I don't think if parents
saw that type of behavior and they saw the teacher
just always just scrambling around taking phones away from kids,
that they would think that that was good either. And
so from that's that enforced my perspective a lot on
this right, like what is a good classroom? And I
think it's just very hard to make the argument that
(05:04):
having phones is good in the classroom. And so I
don't know, I guess I just think that if that's
the end of it, that almost every school district in
America doesn't have has a no cell phone policy, I
think that would be a very good start.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
I think it's a huge start. I mean, I you,
you know, wrote this piece the case for banning children
from social media, and you compare social media to tobacco,
and you know, I'd like to hear a little bit
more from you, because I think a lot of people
would say, well, that's ridiculous, and I would say, no,
that makes perfect sense to me. This is something that
(05:35):
was sold to us. We were made addicted to we
could not quit. And while it wasn't necessarily killing us,
it is like, in fact more insidious because it's like
eroding the quality of what it means to be a person.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yeah, yeah, and it's leading to all sorts of political
problems that we have, right, don't. I don't think that
the level of polarization that we have in this kind
of tree would happen without everybody sitting on their phone
and ingesting the news all day through like social media accounts, right,
Like I mean, and I'm not even talking about stuff
like misinformation or whatever. There's always been misinformation, and it's
(06:13):
probably worse than it was before. But I just think
that it is the fact that you spend like four
to six hours a day reading about everything that is
happening in the world through some sort of preferred filter
that you have, right, and then you just get confirmed
further and further. I mean everybody does. This happens to
me too, but beyond that, just from like almost an
(06:35):
existential like human health perspective. And I do think this
is why I think that eventually this will change, but
I think it will just take a long time. Like
there's nobody other than three people I know maybe in
my entire life, who are happy with the amount of
time they spend on their phone. Everybody else. If you
ask them, what is the thing that you wish you
(06:55):
could change? The number one thing that they'll say is
I wish I wasn't on my stupid phone all the time, right,
Or I wish I wasn't staring at a screen all
the time.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Right, which makes it like a which makes it a
public health crisis, right.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
But it's more just like, I guess, like the thing
that resonates me with me, the mouse, is just like,
can we just go out and talk to other people?
Can we function as normal human beings? And I think
that what happened was that during the pandemic, a whole
bunch of people really got sucked completely into a digital
(07:27):
type of life. And it's not their fault. Yeah, yeah,
that happened to me too. And I think amongst young
people it was intense. It was the most intense for
like people who are maybe middle to high school age
around that time. And I think that that generation is
having a lot of problems now because of it, right,
(07:47):
And and I think that it's such a crisis, and
we're starting to see the signs of it where people
are saying, well, the kids who are coming into college
right now can barely right or like they are they
have no interest in being there.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
It's fine. There are a lot of kids who don't
like college.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
I didn't like college when I went there, but like
I could read, and also like I was one of
four people. Now it's like there's like half the class
are people who are just like I don't even want
to be here. And also by the way, I can't read,
you know, like that's like a it's like a it
really is a crisis amongst young people right now. And
I think that I think that we just need to
(08:29):
figure out a way to unplug this machine right now.
And it's just so hard to figure out how to
do it, right, Like how do you actually do it?
Like Australia is going to do this thing. But one
of the interesting stats was that only like while six
seventy eighty percent of Australian parents were like, yeah, I
don't want my kid on the phone, only thirty percent
(08:49):
where like I'm going to actually enforce this law in
my household right right.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Right, So yeah, there's a problem of will here.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yeah, yeah, it's also the sort of thing where it
is a problem of will. But I was talking to
my friend about this last night, Like, you have the
smartest engineers in the world developing devices that need to
become ubiquitous in the way that people wanted us smoking
(09:18):
cigarettes all the time, and this is something that we
can do inside that is socially acceptable. That's our means
of communication. You know, you weren't calling people on a cigarette.
You weren't like talking to your loved ones on a cigarette.
And so in a way, the level of connectivity that
we have I just feel like has reached a point
(09:41):
of like unnecessary. Do I need to be in touch
with people this much?
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Yeah? I don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
See a movie.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
You see all these stats with young people now they
don't drink, they don't have relationships, they don't go out
with their friends at all anymore. Like the drinking part
of fine whatever, it's I don't think drinking is good
for you, you know. But yeah, the idea that certain
social rituals are now gone because people just sit around
online all the time.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
I think that's horrible for society.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
It's horrible for businesses, but it's mostly just horrible for
people's mentality because they feel like all these.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Digital experiences that.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
They're having are edifying or that they're satisfying in some ways,
and I think that they it just generally isn't right, Yeah,
and that it's hard to sustain anything when everything is
just on your phone and then you forget about it
because there's five thousand other things happening on your phone.
And yeah, I just hope that, like my general sense
(10:41):
of this is that the only thing that is going
to actually stop this is that we need to have
some sort of cultural change in the country that where
a whole bunch of people just say we're not going
to do this anymore. That's right, But people have been
saying that for ten years now, and we are just
getting more and more sucked into our phones.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
In your article, you talk a little bit about why
the fight against you smoking was successful, Like what lessons
can we take from that success is we try to
kind of navigate phone addiction.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Well, I just think that at some point now that
I think for a lot of people, it's very clear
that this stuff is bad for kids, right, and even
there are a lot of stuff that's like, hey, maybe
some of these statistics about mental health and everything like
that are not what they seemed before, which I think
(11:28):
that some of the criticisms have been valid. But even
if you accept all that and you just flatly asked
the question, well, do you think it's good for the
kids to be on the phone, everyone will still say no, no, no, no, no, no,
it's not good. You know, I'm just disputing these specific stats.
So you have a country of people, at least within
the middle class and the upper middle class of parents
(11:50):
who have basically just said this is bad.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
And one of the things that is very true about
American and has always been true about America, is that
when you're talking about children and parenting, uh, the conversation
is really just about the middle class and the upper
middle class, right, because like rich people.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Who has time otherwise?
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Yeah, and also like rich people parenting it's just like, well,
you're fine, you're rich, like, you know, like there's never
been like a parenting trend that was like among the
rich because not that many people are rich, right, And
then with poor people, it's just like, well, you know,
like you're gonna like you have other problems, right, And
so like the discourse around parenting has always been a
middle class in an upper middle class parent discourse, and
(12:30):
it seems like that core audience has fully turned against
the idea that phones were helpful. Now, I remember when
I was in graduate school. This is twenty two years ago,
so it was a long time ago. I went to
Columbia and there's like this very expensive private school that
was attached to Columbia that was run by the Columbia Teachers.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
College, right, and oh yeah, thanks thanks.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
And bank Street back then was basically saying we are
going to be the vanguard of technological et cetera, et cetera.
And in preschool, your kid is going to at a laptop.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
That was me. That was my I went to private
school in New York City. That was I didn't go
to Bank Street, but we did a Bank Street method
and I had a laptop.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
I had a laptop as a kid.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
I had a laptop in third grade.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Yeah, exactly, So that's you.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
So that was me, okay, And now I host a
tech podcast.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Yeah, so it guess it worked. But it's like, oh,
I remember that and thinking it was cool at the time, right,
I was like, oh, yeah, it must be.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
I didn't have kids. I was twenty three years old.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
But it was like, uh but I remember thinking like, oh, well,
that's like a thing and that makes sense, and you know,
the kids should be interfaced to the public, or even
like five years ago where it's like all these kids
should learn a code instead of something like that.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Right, none of that has any type of valance. I mean,
I think that people would would be would revolt.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
I mean the way that you sell upper middle class
to wealthy private school preschool stuff is say, we don't
have a screen anywhere in the building, and that's what
we'll get parents to come, right and so they virtue
now right right like and I would buy into that too,
you know. I mean I send my kid to the
countriest preschool maybe in the country, you know, like it's
(14:11):
like everything was like, yeah, the kids are just gonna
dig irrigation ditches in the backyard and they're gonna and
we're just gonna put a bunch of photos of them
muddy and.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Like with shovels. I was like, this is great.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
There's not a screen insight, right, So as long as
the aspirational idea of childhood now is one that is screenless,
then I do think that that is a very powerful
weapon in getting kids off of their phones. Now, the
problem is is that at some level and at some age,
(14:42):
you lose the fight anyway, right, And so as long
as you can push that fight higher, I think that's
the best way to do it.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
And it should not be at age twelve, right, Like,
it shouldn't be that at age twelve every single kid
has a phone and they're all texting each other all
day and they're all in snapchat doing stuff and like
saying me and shit about each other. Like that's bad, right, So.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
I do think that cultural pressure within that class of
people will probably lead to some change, but then once
they're sixteen, they just become like us. But the problem
is also us, right, The problem is that we're on
our phones all the time.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
And so I don't know. I think it's just a
very difficult question.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
You just have.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
The best way we can do it right now is
just delay the inevitable.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
At this point, after the break, the difference between TV
babysitters and iPad babysitters stay with us. So just going
(16:17):
back to the Australian social media ban, I'm curious, like nationally,
obviously we don't see this happening in the US, But
what about at the state level and how did those
efforts compare to Australia's push.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
It's been very hard to enforce and it's been very
hard to get passed, right, So I don't think that
like basically it's like, uh, we're going to pass a
law and we're not going to enforce it, but we
hope that everyone abides by this law. I think that's
the best people can do right now. You know, here
in America, the tech companies obviously have a huge political influence,
(16:53):
especially right now, and I think that's something like I
don't know, like Elon Musk, for example, owned a social
media company, and I think that if you told if
the federal government was basically saying, hey, we're going to
just not have a decent portion of the kids who
use this type of thing on the platform anymore, then
he would object, right because it would cut his user
(17:16):
base down. And he has more political power than a
lot of people because of the system that we have
here in America, and he could get his way, right.
So I think something like Instagram for example, right, like
if you just said kitchen be on Instagram, I mean
Instagram is huge amongst kids, a platform like Snapchat is
probably mostly kids at this point, right, and so the
(17:38):
political influence that those companies have here in the United
States makes it really difficult. Now in Australia they have
less political influence because Facebook and Twitter, these are all
old names that don't exist anymore. I'm sorry, Snapchat, Meta mea.
They trying to distract us, right, They're not in Australia,
(18:02):
And so Australia can just do something like that here.
And then you asked where they have a ton of
political power, I think it'd be very difficult.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Yeah, And I know we're kind of dipping into two
pools here. I think there's a difference between social media
and cell phones, even though I think for a lot
of kids a cell phone is social media. But in
any event, what I'm saying is that it does seem
like some young people believe that social media is bad
for them. Like I actually recently heard I don't know
(18:29):
if you've heard the trend in Malaysia where there's a
youth retirement home where people can just escape the digital
world for a month by living on a compound. And
then of course there's like the trend of none Girl Summer,
which was like an uptick in gen Z ladies checking
into convents to escape for.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
A few months.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
So, as someone who writes about this a lot, what
do you think has to happen Societ Italy for people
to really and because every no, there's nobody as to
your point, there's like nobody in my life who's like,
I need to use my phone more. What has to
happen to like change these social norms, like do people
(19:13):
need to go on to silent retreat? I mean, it
feels like everything that people are doing are so far
out of the realm of reality, like I'm going to
go on a silent retreat, or I'm going to brick
my phone, or I'm going to put my phone in
a locked box in my house.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
So I think amongst the wealthy that this type of
stuff will become more common. Like, for example, there are
those light phones, right which people.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Do you use one?
Speaker 3 (19:41):
No?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
But I almost bought one, but it's like eight hundred
dollars and I was like, really expensive, Say, I don't want.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
To buy a useless phone.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
But I think that one of the things that when
I was talking to my friend about dumb phone. My
friend is quite rich and he was like you know,
he's like, you're not rich enough to have a dumb
one or to have a light phone.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
He's like, that's the way that like people flex in
my world when they're super rich and they want to
show that, like you know, that they're so rich that
they don't even have to answer text messages.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Right, it does so like the digital form of biohacking.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Or it's like I think it's basically saying like I
don't have to respond to any emails ever, I don't
have to ever be on slack, right, like I'm the
king of the castle. Yeah, And within that group, I
think it's probably going to be quite popular. I think
that the problem is that you have a whole group
of people, and I think that this includes most of
the middle class that can't actually do their jobs without
(20:34):
having their phones. And so the number one thing that
I think would have to happen is that I think
that workplaces would have to install a different level of
expectation for response time and for connectivity and everything like that, right,
And I just have a hard time believing that these
workplaces will just go back and say, well, you don't
have to have a phone now, Right, there's a reason
(20:55):
why Google. When you go to Google, the first thing
they give you is like, uh, pixel phone. Right, It's
because they want to track every single thing that you do,
but be they also want.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
To be able to be on the all times.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah, And so as long as those expectations are there,
like we're all just going to be addicted to the
phones because and it's like a workplace problem more than anything.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
You wrote about deleting your social media from your phone
and a piece titled if you quit social media, will
you read more books? Did you read more books?
Speaker 2 (21:28):
I did, but it was mostly because I was writing
a book and I needed to read a bunch of
books to do that. But in terms of like light,
you're not really you know, yeah, I was more productive,
Like I wrote the book very quickly. And I had
found like this happened because I had taken another social
media break a couple of years ago or three years ago,
(21:49):
and it was because my I had had another kid
and I was on paternity leave and I was like,
I don't want to sit on social media all the
time while.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
This kid is you know, coming alive.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Becoming, yes, becoming like a small person. But like what
I found was that you know, I don't know. Like,
when you have a kid, you have a lot of downtime, right,
especially in the first three to six months when they
can't really do anything. And during that downtime, I like
wrote a whole screenplay, which I had never done before,
and I was like, oh my god, I was so productive.
But the reading part of it where I felt like
(22:20):
my brain would reconfigure itself and not just want this
like you know, social media stream, but would engage again.
I mean, I wrote a novel. I used to be
very into you know, fiction and whatever like that. That
part didn't materialist.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
I wish it had.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
But just you wrote a successful novel I did.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
I did, Yeah, yeah, yeah, but that was before social media,
Like that was like two thousand and nine.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
I think I wrote.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
True true, true, true, true true. I don't know how
people do it. I mean, I'm trying to write more.
This is more of a support session for social media
and phone addiction. It's just my phone too, it's not
even social media. I think it's important to parse the
two out. I think kids should not be on social media.
I think that's so weird. But I also think, like
(23:06):
if you don't raise kids with phones, they're like, dope.
I mean, their brains are going to develop differently.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
I agree, I think so too. And I think.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
I don't know nine year olds who are on social media,
so I can't really tell, but I do know what
it's like when I try and rip the iPad out
of my kid's hand, you know, right, And that is scary, right,
And I think for parents who work and who have jobs,
it's really difficult to not rely at least on the
iPad because it's a form of childcare, right.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
So I just think we're in a tough spot because
like a lot of people are just like, well, I
don't have I mean, for me, it's quite fortunate where
I don't.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
I'm a writer, so I get to be at home
a lot.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
But for people who are working job to jobs and
they have kids, they have to rely on these digital
projects to do a lot of the childcare right to
occupy their kids. And I just think that at some
point there is a difference between that and what we did,
or at least what I did when I was growing up,
which is just like sit in front of the television, right.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
I do think it's different, right.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
It is more taters, Yeah, because I was barely even
watching the television.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
TV was not as addicting as social media and phones, right.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
I don't think so at all, Like they could turn
the TV off and I couldn't sneak away and bring
the TV.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Exactly. Are any other countries following in Australia's footsteps that
you know of?
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Well, I don't think that any.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
I think that there are other countries that are smaller
that have social media bands for kids, right, But I
think that there will be a movement, But I don't
think it will be based on whether or not Australia's
experiment is successful. I think it will based on other
factors like friendliness to the United States, for example. Right,
(25:06):
Like there might be bands because of reasons that are
like geopolitical and economic, but I imagine those countries will
just build their own social media networks. Like did you
see that europe is the European Union is thinking about
starting their own Twitter and it's called W I can't.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
I can't. I was like, what are they going to
talk about over on W on dubs?
Speaker 2 (25:31):
But the idea that it's gonna somehow be different, like
I just find so naive.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
All right, So I'm going to ask you a hypothetical question, right,
go ahead, if you were a lawmaker, what would your
ideal social media band look like?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
So I am a free speech absolutist, and that was
you know, I don't think a band is a good idea.
I think that schools and having them in schools is
different because I think that the kids would still have
the opportunity to express themselves outside of school.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
But I just think that the.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Downside, like it's like, the downsides of having that in
a school are enough where the civil liberties questions are
not relevant to me at least, right. It's not like
you've completely silenced the kid. You just said, Hey, just
like you can't, you know, do certain behaviors in certain places.
You can't do this behavior in this place, right. But
(26:26):
for me, I think that it would just be cultural,
you know, Like I think that it would be people
waking up and saying that this is bad. And that's
why I'm in such a bad space with this stuff
and why I feel like I, you know, write this
column over and over again because I don't have a
very satisfying answer to it, because I don't think that
a cultural shift will probably change that much. Like I said,
(26:48):
unless these workplaces stop demanding that everybody be on their
phone all and and I don't think that it will
really work unless there's stuff like I mean, people have
like there have been who suggested things like there needs
to be something like the Surgeon General's warning on social
media websites or whatever.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
It's like, it's just not going to work, you know.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
I think there needs to be Surgeon Generals warning on phones.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Like every time you pick it up, it says like
put me down best for you.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
And it shows like it just like shows photos of me,
like walking into a poll in New York City while
I'm testing.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I don't know. You could probably
code something like that into your own phone so that
you pick it up and then it starts showing your
you like walking into traffic or something like that.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Yeah. I think that.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
The worst part of it, and the part that I
think about so deeply is the sense of urgency that
it is created.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
I guess I think that it's.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
I think it will accelerate for a little bit because
I think all these kids use AI for everything now, Yeah,
and that is concerning to me, but like it's like
concerning to me that you know, I live right near
the case is a UC Berkeley, which is a very
good school, very hard to get into obviously, and I
taught for a semester there, and I know a lot
(28:06):
of the professors there. And when professors started complaining at
the beginning about all their kids were cheating and using chetchibt,
I kind of I was like, Okay, well, we'll see
if this is real or not, you know, but at
this point, I think that is quite clear that a
large percentage of kids are just cheating through everything or
most of the stuff that they have to do. And
(28:27):
that also will make them more It'll make them more
dependent on this type of technology, right because like this
basically allow them to get through life without really having
to do much of anything. And so I think that's
the next thing I think people should be concerned about.
I'm a little bit more like skeptical about this stuff
(28:48):
about like, oh, well, this kid is like thinks that
chetchibt is his best friend, and like, you know, it
led to this parasarg I'm just like, Okay, how many
of these kids are there. I'm sure there's some, but
I don't think there are many. But the cheating thing
I think is bad development, because I think that it
essentially has made these kids believe that any question that
they have in life, or any type of problem or
(29:10):
any type.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
Of task that they're given can be solved, right.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
They should just go straight to Claudo chatch Ept and
that that makes them even more dependent on their phone.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Thank you so much, Je, Really, I've had a fun
time talking about this.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
No, thank you.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
That's it for this We for tech Stuff. I'm care price.
This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis and Melissa Slaughter.
It was executive produced by me Oswa Washan, Julian Nutter,
and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope, and Katrina Noravel for iHeart Podcasts.
Jack Insley mixed this episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote our
theme song. Please rate, review, and reach out to us
(30:19):
at tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com. We want
to hear from you.
Welcome to tech stuff. I'm care Price and this is
the story. It's been two months since Australia's first of
its kind social media ban went into effect on December tenth,
twenty twenty five. If you were under sixteen in Australia,
you could no longer create an account on TikTok x, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube,
Snapchat or threads, to name a few, and if you
(00:37):
had a profile, it was deactivated. Of course, there are
a lot of outstanding questions, including can Australia effectively enforce
this band? But no matter how airtight the law, my
guest today thinks it could have a powerful downstream effect.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
More than anything, I think that what it does is
that it gives parents a thing to point to to say, hey, like,
you know, nobody else is on social media and therefore
you shouldn't be as well, which gets rid of one
of the big problems with kids on social media, which
is just that they feel like because everyone else is
on it, if they're not on it, they're going to
be socially isolated.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
This is Jay Caspian King. He writes the fault Lines
newsletter for The New Yorker, and he recently wrote a
piece that caught my eye titled Americans won't ban kids
from social media? What can we do? Instead? I'll let
Jay answer his own question. You wrote this article about
why you think America won't implement large scale social media
(01:33):
bands for kids very soon after the Australian band went
into effect, and before you launched into your argument, you
asked readers for the sake of the discussion, to agree
on three statements. What were those statements?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
They were One, teenagers have First Amendment rights. Two, social
media has become the place where people, especially young people,
express their views. And three social media is very bad
for kids.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
And what was the What is the question that you
set out to answer given these parameters?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Well, I think that right now, if you think about
American free speech precedent and free speech law, it's going
to be very hard to ban everything for everybody under
the age of sixteen like Australia has done. I mean,
I think that the Supreme Court has basically routinely held
that young people have freedom of speech. And it is
also routinely held that the social media platforms, even if
(02:28):
they are private, have some influence within the First Amendment
because they function as a public square. Right and so
basically say, everyone under the age of sixteen or seventeen,
or whatever age you want to put it at no
longer has access to the public square and can no
longer express their opinions. That's a huge free speech problem.
And I don't think that it would pass in this country.
(02:49):
I don't think that the court would uphold it, right,
I just don't. And so my thought was just I
have kids. I don't want them to be addicted to
social media. I don't want them to be on their
phones all day, right, and what do we do?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Right?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
We can't ban it, So then what what can Americans
do to try and make it so that kids are
not on phones all day? That was a sort of
I've been thinking about this question for a while actually,
and like you know, it's all just based on my
own neurosis as a parent.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
How many kids do you have?
Speaker 3 (03:15):
I have two?
Speaker 1 (03:17):
What are their ages?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
They are eight and three, and so I'm sorry, nine
to three. And so it's right at the beginning for
the nine year old of having some kids who have Apple.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Watches and iPad.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
They all have iPads but have started communicating via iPad.
I know that some of them text each other through iPad.
But you know, where I live in Berkeley, California, it
there is like a great social stigma around it, and
so the kids don't do it as much as they
might in other places. But yeah, I think once they
get to about twelve years old in middle school, then
(03:49):
it becomes quite ubiquitous.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
So Australia has proven how far they're willing to go.
Is there like an American answer to how far we
are willing to go in order to protect kids from
social media if it's not a full out ban.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Yeah, I think that bannings phones in school is aboad
as far as we'll go, you know. And I think
that that's happening in a lot of districts in a
lot of states. And I think that within the next
five years it'll be very rare to find a school
district in America that allows kids to have phones in school.
I personally just think that that's positive.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
You know.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
I was a teacher when I was younger, and this
was before cell phones were completely ubiquitous, you know, And
when I talk to teacher friends and everything like that
with their school doesn't have a no phones policy, they
say that they spend like an inordinate amount of time
just taking phones away from kids, you know, And I
don't think that the teacher should be doing that. I
(04:43):
don't think that that's healthy for them. I don't think
it's healthy for the classroom. I don't think if parents
saw that type of behavior and they saw the teacher
just always just scrambling around taking phones away from kids,
that they would think that that was good either. And
so from that's that enforced my perspective a lot on
this right, like what is a good classroom? And I
think it's just very hard to make the argument that
(05:04):
having phones is good in the classroom. And so I
don't know, I guess I just think that if that's
the end of it, that almost every school district in
America doesn't have has a no cell phone policy, I
think that would be a very good start.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
I think it's a huge start. I mean, I you,
you know, wrote this piece the case for banning children
from social media, and you compare social media to tobacco,
and you know, I'd like to hear a little bit
more from you, because I think a lot of people
would say, well, that's ridiculous, and I would say, no,
that makes perfect sense to me. This is something that
(05:35):
was sold to us. We were made addicted to we
could not quit. And while it wasn't necessarily killing us,
it is like, in fact more insidious because it's like
eroding the quality of what it means to be a person.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yeah, yeah, and it's leading to all sorts of political
problems that we have, right, don't. I don't think that
the level of polarization that we have in this kind
of tree would happen without everybody sitting on their phone
and ingesting the news all day through like social media accounts, right,
Like I mean, and I'm not even talking about stuff
like misinformation or whatever. There's always been misinformation, and it's
(06:13):
probably worse than it was before. But I just think
that it is the fact that you spend like four
to six hours a day reading about everything that is
happening in the world through some sort of preferred filter
that you have, right, and then you just get confirmed
further and further. I mean everybody does. This happens to
me too, but beyond that, just from like almost an
(06:35):
existential like human health perspective. And I do think this
is why I think that eventually this will change, but
I think it will just take a long time. Like
there's nobody other than three people I know maybe in
my entire life, who are happy with the amount of
time they spend on their phone. Everybody else. If you
ask them, what is the thing that you wish you
(06:55):
could change? The number one thing that they'll say is
I wish I wasn't on my stupid phone all the time, right,
Or I wish I wasn't staring at a screen all
the time.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Right, which makes it like a which makes it a
public health crisis, right.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
But it's more just like, I guess, like the thing
that resonates me with me, the mouse, is just like,
can we just go out and talk to other people?
Can we function as normal human beings? And I think
that what happened was that during the pandemic, a whole
bunch of people really got sucked completely into a digital
(07:27):
type of life. And it's not their fault. Yeah, yeah,
that happened to me too. And I think amongst young
people it was intense. It was the most intense for
like people who are maybe middle to high school age
around that time. And I think that that generation is
having a lot of problems now because of it, right,
(07:47):
And and I think that it's such a crisis, and
we're starting to see the signs of it where people
are saying, well, the kids who are coming into college
right now can barely right or like they are they
have no interest in being there.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
It's fine. There are a lot of kids who don't
like college.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
I didn't like college when I went there, but like
I could read, and also like I was one of
four people. Now it's like there's like half the class
are people who are just like I don't even want
to be here. And also by the way, I can't read,
you know, like that's like a it's like a it
really is a crisis amongst young people right now. And
I think that I think that we just need to
(08:29):
figure out a way to unplug this machine right now.
And it's just so hard to figure out how to
do it, right, Like how do you actually do it?
Like Australia is going to do this thing. But one
of the interesting stats was that only like while six
seventy eighty percent of Australian parents were like, yeah, I
don't want my kid on the phone, only thirty percent
(08:49):
where like I'm going to actually enforce this law in
my household right right.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Right, So yeah, there's a problem of will here.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yeah, yeah, it's also the sort of thing where it
is a problem of will. But I was talking to
my friend about this last night, Like, you have the
smartest engineers in the world developing devices that need to
become ubiquitous in the way that people wanted us smoking
(09:18):
cigarettes all the time, and this is something that we
can do inside that is socially acceptable. That's our means
of communication. You know, you weren't calling people on a cigarette.
You weren't like talking to your loved ones on a cigarette.
And so in a way, the level of connectivity that
we have I just feel like has reached a point
(09:41):
of like unnecessary. Do I need to be in touch
with people this much?
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Yeah? I don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
See a movie.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
You see all these stats with young people now they
don't drink, they don't have relationships, they don't go out
with their friends at all anymore. Like the drinking part
of fine whatever, it's I don't think drinking is good
for you, you know. But yeah, the idea that certain
social rituals are now gone because people just sit around
online all the time.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
I think that's horrible for society.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
It's horrible for businesses, but it's mostly just horrible for
people's mentality because they feel like all these.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Digital experiences that.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
They're having are edifying or that they're satisfying in some ways,
and I think that they it just generally isn't right, Yeah,
and that it's hard to sustain anything when everything is
just on your phone and then you forget about it
because there's five thousand other things happening on your phone.
And yeah, I just hope that, like my general sense
(10:41):
of this is that the only thing that is going
to actually stop this is that we need to have
some sort of cultural change in the country that where
a whole bunch of people just say we're not going
to do this anymore. That's right, But people have been
saying that for ten years now, and we are just
getting more and more sucked into our phones.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
In your article, you talk a little bit about why
the fight against you smoking was successful, Like what lessons
can we take from that success is we try to
kind of navigate phone addiction.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Well, I just think that at some point now that
I think for a lot of people, it's very clear
that this stuff is bad for kids, right, and even
there are a lot of stuff that's like, hey, maybe
some of these statistics about mental health and everything like
that are not what they seemed before, which I think
(11:28):
that some of the criticisms have been valid. But even
if you accept all that and you just flatly asked
the question, well, do you think it's good for the
kids to be on the phone, everyone will still say no, no, no, no, no, no,
it's not good. You know, I'm just disputing these specific stats.
So you have a country of people, at least within
the middle class and the upper middle class of parents
(11:50):
who have basically just said this is bad.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
And one of the things that is very true about
American and has always been true about America, is that
when you're talking about children and parenting, uh, the conversation
is really just about the middle class and the upper
middle class, right, because like rich people.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Who has time otherwise?
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Yeah, and also like rich people parenting it's just like, well,
you're fine, you're rich, like, you know, like there's never
been like a parenting trend that was like among the
rich because not that many people are rich, right, And
then with poor people, it's just like, well, you know,
like you're gonna like you have other problems, right, And
so like the discourse around parenting has always been a
middle class in an upper middle class parent discourse, and
(12:30):
it seems like that core audience has fully turned against
the idea that phones were helpful. Now, I remember when
I was in graduate school. This is twenty two years ago,
so it was a long time ago. I went to
Columbia and there's like this very expensive private school that
was attached to Columbia that was run by the Columbia Teachers.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
College, right, and oh yeah, thanks thanks.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
And bank Street back then was basically saying we are
going to be the vanguard of technological et cetera, et cetera.
And in preschool, your kid is going to at a laptop.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
That was me. That was my I went to private
school in New York City. That was I didn't go
to Bank Street, but we did a Bank Street method
and I had a laptop.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
I had a laptop as a kid.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
I had a laptop in third grade.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Yeah, exactly, So that's you.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
So that was me, okay, And now I host a
tech podcast.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Yeah, so it guess it worked. But it's like, oh,
I remember that and thinking it was cool at the time, right,
I was like, oh, yeah, it must be.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
I didn't have kids. I was twenty three years old.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
But it was like, uh but I remember thinking like, oh, well,
that's like a thing and that makes sense, and you know,
the kids should be interfaced to the public, or even
like five years ago where it's like all these kids
should learn a code instead of something like that.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Right, none of that has any type of valance. I mean,
I think that people would would be would revolt.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
I mean the way that you sell upper middle class
to wealthy private school preschool stuff is say, we don't
have a screen anywhere in the building, and that's what
we'll get parents to come, right and so they virtue
now right right like and I would buy into that too,
you know. I mean I send my kid to the
countriest preschool maybe in the country, you know, like it's
(14:11):
like everything was like, yeah, the kids are just gonna
dig irrigation ditches in the backyard and they're gonna and
we're just gonna put a bunch of photos of them
muddy and.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Like with shovels. I was like, this is great.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
There's not a screen insight, right, So as long as
the aspirational idea of childhood now is one that is screenless,
then I do think that that is a very powerful
weapon in getting kids off of their phones. Now, the
problem is is that at some level and at some age,
(14:42):
you lose the fight anyway, right, And so as long
as you can push that fight higher, I think that's
the best way to do it.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
And it should not be at age twelve, right, Like,
it shouldn't be that at age twelve every single kid
has a phone and they're all texting each other all
day and they're all in snapchat doing stuff and like
saying me and shit about each other. Like that's bad, right, So.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
I do think that cultural pressure within that class of
people will probably lead to some change, but then once
they're sixteen, they just become like us. But the problem
is also us, right, The problem is that we're on
our phones all the time.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
And so I don't know. I think it's just a
very difficult question.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
You just have.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
The best way we can do it right now is
just delay the inevitable.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
At this point, after the break, the difference between TV
babysitters and iPad babysitters stay with us. So just going
(16:17):
back to the Australian social media ban, I'm curious, like nationally,
obviously we don't see this happening in the US, But
what about at the state level and how did those
efforts compare to Australia's push.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
It's been very hard to enforce and it's been very
hard to get passed, right, So I don't think that
like basically it's like, uh, we're going to pass a
law and we're not going to enforce it, but we
hope that everyone abides by this law. I think that's
the best people can do right now. You know, here
in America, the tech companies obviously have a huge political influence,
(16:53):
especially right now, and I think that's something like I
don't know, like Elon Musk, for example, owned a social
media company, and I think that if you told if
the federal government was basically saying, hey, we're going to
just not have a decent portion of the kids who
use this type of thing on the platform anymore, then
he would object, right because it would cut his user
(17:16):
base down. And he has more political power than a
lot of people because of the system that we have
here in America, and he could get his way, right.
So I think something like Instagram for example, right, like
if you just said kitchen be on Instagram, I mean
Instagram is huge amongst kids, a platform like Snapchat is
probably mostly kids at this point, right, and so the
(17:38):
political influence that those companies have here in the United
States makes it really difficult. Now in Australia they have
less political influence because Facebook and Twitter, these are all
old names that don't exist anymore. I'm sorry, Snapchat, Meta mea.
They trying to distract us, right, They're not in Australia,
(18:02):
And so Australia can just do something like that here.
And then you asked where they have a ton of
political power, I think it'd be very difficult.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Yeah, And I know we're kind of dipping into two
pools here. I think there's a difference between social media
and cell phones, even though I think for a lot
of kids a cell phone is social media. But in
any event, what I'm saying is that it does seem
like some young people believe that social media is bad
for them. Like I actually recently heard I don't know
(18:29):
if you've heard the trend in Malaysia where there's a
youth retirement home where people can just escape the digital
world for a month by living on a compound. And
then of course there's like the trend of none Girl Summer,
which was like an uptick in gen Z ladies checking
into convents to escape for.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
A few months.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
So, as someone who writes about this a lot, what
do you think has to happen Societ Italy for people
to really and because every no, there's nobody as to
your point, there's like nobody in my life who's like,
I need to use my phone more. What has to
happen to like change these social norms, like do people
(19:13):
need to go on to silent retreat? I mean, it
feels like everything that people are doing are so far
out of the realm of reality, like I'm going to
go on a silent retreat, or I'm going to brick
my phone, or I'm going to put my phone in
a locked box in my house.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
So I think amongst the wealthy that this type of
stuff will become more common. Like, for example, there are
those light phones, right which people.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Do you use one?
Speaker 3 (19:41):
No?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
But I almost bought one, but it's like eight hundred
dollars and I was like, really expensive, Say, I don't want.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
To buy a useless phone.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
But I think that one of the things that when
I was talking to my friend about dumb phone. My
friend is quite rich and he was like you know,
he's like, you're not rich enough to have a dumb
one or to have a light phone.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
He's like, that's the way that like people flex in
my world when they're super rich and they want to
show that, like you know, that they're so rich that
they don't even have to answer text messages.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Right, it does so like the digital form of biohacking.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Or it's like I think it's basically saying like I
don't have to respond to any emails ever, I don't
have to ever be on slack, right, like I'm the
king of the castle. Yeah, And within that group, I
think it's probably going to be quite popular. I think
that the problem is that you have a whole group
of people, and I think that this includes most of
the middle class that can't actually do their jobs without
(20:34):
having their phones. And so the number one thing that
I think would have to happen is that I think
that workplaces would have to install a different level of
expectation for response time and for connectivity and everything like that, right,
And I just have a hard time believing that these
workplaces will just go back and say, well, you don't
have to have a phone now, Right, there's a reason
(20:55):
why Google. When you go to Google, the first thing
they give you is like, uh, pixel phone. Right, It's
because they want to track every single thing that you do,
but be they also want.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
To be able to be on the all times.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah, And so as long as those expectations are there,
like we're all just going to be addicted to the
phones because and it's like a workplace problem more than anything.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
You wrote about deleting your social media from your phone
and a piece titled if you quit social media, will
you read more books? Did you read more books?
Speaker 2 (21:28):
I did, but it was mostly because I was writing
a book and I needed to read a bunch of
books to do that. But in terms of like light,
you're not really you know, yeah, I was more productive,
Like I wrote the book very quickly. And I had
found like this happened because I had taken another social
media break a couple of years ago or three years ago,
(21:49):
and it was because my I had had another kid
and I was on paternity leave and I was like,
I don't want to sit on social media all the
time while.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
This kid is you know, coming alive.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Becoming, yes, becoming like a small person. But like what
I found was that you know, I don't know. Like,
when you have a kid, you have a lot of downtime, right,
especially in the first three to six months when they
can't really do anything. And during that downtime, I like
wrote a whole screenplay, which I had never done before,
and I was like, oh my god, I was so productive.
But the reading part of it where I felt like
(22:20):
my brain would reconfigure itself and not just want this
like you know, social media stream, but would engage again.
I mean, I wrote a novel. I used to be
very into you know, fiction and whatever like that. That
part didn't materialist.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
I wish it had.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
But just you wrote a successful novel I did.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
I did, Yeah, yeah, yeah, but that was before social media,
Like that was like two thousand and nine.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
I think I wrote.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
True true, true, true, true true. I don't know how
people do it. I mean, I'm trying to write more.
This is more of a support session for social media
and phone addiction. It's just my phone too, it's not
even social media. I think it's important to parse the
two out. I think kids should not be on social media.
I think that's so weird. But I also think, like
(23:06):
if you don't raise kids with phones, they're like, dope.
I mean, their brains are going to develop differently.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
I agree, I think so too. And I think.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
I don't know nine year olds who are on social media,
so I can't really tell, but I do know what
it's like when I try and rip the iPad out
of my kid's hand, you know, right, And that is scary, right,
And I think for parents who work and who have jobs,
it's really difficult to not rely at least on the
iPad because it's a form of childcare, right.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
So I just think we're in a tough spot because
like a lot of people are just like, well, I
don't have I mean, for me, it's quite fortunate where
I don't.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
I'm a writer, so I get to be at home
a lot.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
But for people who are working job to jobs and
they have kids, they have to rely on these digital
projects to do a lot of the childcare right to
occupy their kids. And I just think that at some
point there is a difference between that and what we did,
or at least what I did when I was growing up,
which is just like sit in front of the television, right.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
I do think it's different, right.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
It is more taters, Yeah, because I was barely even
watching the television.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
TV was not as addicting as social media and phones, right.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
I don't think so at all, Like they could turn
the TV off and I couldn't sneak away and bring
the TV.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Exactly. Are any other countries following in Australia's footsteps that
you know of?
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Well, I don't think that any.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
I think that there are other countries that are smaller
that have social media bands for kids, right, But I
think that there will be a movement, But I don't
think it will be based on whether or not Australia's
experiment is successful. I think it will based on other
factors like friendliness to the United States, for example. Right,
(25:06):
Like there might be bands because of reasons that are
like geopolitical and economic, but I imagine those countries will
just build their own social media networks. Like did you
see that europe is the European Union is thinking about
starting their own Twitter and it's called W I can't.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
I can't. I was like, what are they going to
talk about over on W on dubs?
Speaker 2 (25:31):
But the idea that it's gonna somehow be different, like
I just find so naive.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
All right, So I'm going to ask you a hypothetical question, right,
go ahead, if you were a lawmaker, what would your
ideal social media band look like?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
So I am a free speech absolutist, and that was
you know, I don't think a band is a good idea.
I think that schools and having them in schools is
different because I think that the kids would still have
the opportunity to express themselves outside of school.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
But I just think that the.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Downside, like it's like, the downsides of having that in
a school are enough where the civil liberties questions are
not relevant to me at least, right. It's not like
you've completely silenced the kid. You just said, Hey, just
like you can't, you know, do certain behaviors in certain places.
You can't do this behavior in this place, right. But
(26:26):
for me, I think that it would just be cultural,
you know, Like I think that it would be people
waking up and saying that this is bad. And that's
why I'm in such a bad space with this stuff
and why I feel like I, you know, write this
column over and over again because I don't have a
very satisfying answer to it, because I don't think that
a cultural shift will probably change that much. Like I said,
(26:48):
unless these workplaces stop demanding that everybody be on their
phone all and and I don't think that it will
really work unless there's stuff like I mean, people have
like there have been who suggested things like there needs
to be something like the Surgeon General's warning on social
media websites or whatever.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
It's like, it's just not going to work, you know.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
I think there needs to be Surgeon Generals warning on phones.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Like every time you pick it up, it says like
put me down best for you.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
And it shows like it just like shows photos of me,
like walking into a poll in New York City while
I'm testing.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I don't know. You could probably
code something like that into your own phone so that
you pick it up and then it starts showing your
you like walking into traffic or something like that.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Yeah. I think that.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
The worst part of it, and the part that I
think about so deeply is the sense of urgency that
it is created.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
I guess I think that it's.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
I think it will accelerate for a little bit because
I think all these kids use AI for everything now, Yeah,
and that is concerning to me, but like it's like
concerning to me that you know, I live right near
the case is a UC Berkeley, which is a very
good school, very hard to get into obviously, and I
taught for a semester there, and I know a lot
(28:06):
of the professors there. And when professors started complaining at
the beginning about all their kids were cheating and using chetchibt,
I kind of I was like, Okay, well, we'll see
if this is real or not, you know, but at
this point, I think that is quite clear that a
large percentage of kids are just cheating through everything or
most of the stuff that they have to do. And
(28:27):
that also will make them more It'll make them more
dependent on this type of technology, right because like this
basically allow them to get through life without really having
to do much of anything. And so I think that's
the next thing I think people should be concerned about.
I'm a little bit more like skeptical about this stuff
(28:48):
about like, oh, well, this kid is like thinks that
chetchibt is his best friend, and like, you know, it
led to this parasarg I'm just like, Okay, how many
of these kids are there. I'm sure there's some, but
I don't think there are many. But the cheating thing
I think is bad development, because I think that it
essentially has made these kids believe that any question that
they have in life, or any type of problem or
(29:10):
any type.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
Of task that they're given can be solved, right.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
They should just go straight to Claudo chatch Ept and
that that makes them even more dependent on their phone.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Thank you so much, Je, Really, I've had a fun
time talking about this.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
No, thank you.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
That's it for this We for tech Stuff. I'm care price.
This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis and Melissa Slaughter.
It was executive produced by me Oswa Washan, Julian Nutter,
and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope, and Katrina Noravel for iHeart Podcasts.
Jack Insley mixed this episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote our
theme song. Please rate, review, and reach out to us
(30:19):
at tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com. We want
to hear from you.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Betrayal Season 5
Saskia Inwood woke up one morning, knowing her life would never be the same. The night before, she learned the unimaginable – that the husband she knew in the light of day was a different person after dark. This season unpacks Saskia’s discovery of her husband’s secret life and her fight to bring him to justice. Along the way, we expose a crime that is just coming to light. This is also a story about the myth of the “perfect victim:” who gets believed, who gets doubted, and why. We follow Saskia as she works to reclaim her body, her voice, and her life. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team, email us at betrayalpod@gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com